Facebook’s Answer To Snapchat, Lifestage, Shut Down

Facebook has confirmed that is has shuttered its Lifestage app which was aimed at high school students. The Lifestyle app was launched close to a year ago. According to a Business Insider report, the app was taken off the App Store days ago just before its first anniversary.

“Teens continue to make up an important part of the global community on Facebook, and we’ve learned a lot from Lifestage. We will continue to incorporate these learnings into features in the main Facebook app,” a spokesperson for Facebook said.

High school users

Aimed at users aged 21 or less, rolling out of the app took place one school at a time and users were not required to have an account with the main Facebook app to begin using Lifestage. To enroll users had to indicate which school they were in and video profiles of other users in the same institution or other schools nearby would be brought up. By default the app was closed off to all schools. For a school to be unlocked, a minimum of 20 students needed to have signed up on Lifestage.

In its short existence, the app got just a few updates. The last Lifestage update was last year in October. Its popularity was also limited and it never got to the top charts of Apple’s App Store. The app also never managed to have its Android version released.

Meant to be a Snapchat-killer

The creator of Lifestage was Michael Sayman who became an employee of Facebook shortly after he graduated from high school. According to Sayman his motivation was to come up with an app that users his age would comfortably relate to and which would help enhance connections in his demographic easily and conveniently.

Lifestage was similar to Snapchat as users could record as well as share short video clips. Users could also add filters and stickers to these video clips. The content uploaded on Lifestage was public and could be viewed by anyone even those who didn’t belong to a particular school.

One of the reasons being put forward as to why Facebook has killed Lifestage is that the social media giant no longer has a need for a standalone app that will act as a counter to Snapchat. This is because Facebook has managed to copy the most popular features on Snapchat and integrated them with Instagram, Messenger and its main app making Lifestage redundant.